“The climate crisis is among the most pressing issues in today’s world. All sectors of society and the economy must take critical steps against global warming, including the arts sector,” says Ahmed El Attar, who is the founder and artistic director of the Downtown Contemporary Arts Festival.
We all have a part to play in fighting the ongoing climate crisis, and artists and cultural practitioners can do much to help raise awareness and mobilize climate action among their communities.
To honor the festival’s commitment to community development, this year, D-CAF’s Special Events program will shed light on ways to live, work, and create more sustainably. The events will encourage artists to think of their roles not only as creators, but also as holders of an important social responsibility.
The program will launch on 3 October with an Environmental Workshop for Arts and Culture Organizations held in partnership with Greenish, a youth-driven environmental movement working to empower one million climate activists across the MENA region.
The workshop will be moderated by Mohamed Kamel, who is co-managing director of Greenish. Kamel is a public health engineer specialized in solid waste management. Over the past four years, he has been actively working on projects designed to reduce plastic pollution. In this workshop, Kamel will instruct cultural practitioners on ways to reduce the environmental impact of their organizations and events by recycling, minimizing water use and energy consumption, and spreading awareness throughout their communities.
On 4 October, D-CAF artistic director Ahmed El Attar and Danish theater director Jesper Pederson will hold an Arts Talk on Sustainability in the Performing Arts.
The talk will discuss ways in which theater as an artistic medium can give audiences a concrete sense of connection to something larger than themselves, something which long precedes and outlives them —our planet Earth and its rich ecosystem. In Pederson’s words, the talk will seek to answer the question: how can theater practitioners tell stories that place the audience not at the center of the universe, but as a node in the cosmic web of a much larger system?
The two speakers bring forth a wealth of expertise in the fields of performing arts and theater.
Jesper Pederson is an award-winning theater maker based in Copenhagen, Denmark. Some of his most notable works include Blam, The Foxcave, and Dust, which made its Arab World premiere at D-CAF 2019. Pederson also curates the international playwriting festival Pink Pavilion.
Ahmed El Attar is an Egyptian theater director, playwright, and cultural manager, and was granted the title of Knight of the Order of Arts and Letters by the French Ministry of Culture in 2018. He is the founder and general manager of Orient Productions and the founder and artistic director of D-CAF, the Temple Independent Theater Company, and Studio Emad Eddin.
On 18 October, D-CAF will host an info session in collaboration with British cultural organization Farnham Maltings entitled International Touring: Getting More Mileage from your Artistic Ideas Without Traveling an Inch.
Moderated by Farnham Maltings international producers Hannah Slimmon and Sophia Victoria, this session will present a series of case studies from international artists and organisations that will hopefully spark ideas and confidence to find new and creative ways to get your work out there, generate income and reach audiences from the world over, in spite of the restrictions imposed by the COVID-19 pandemic and the ongoing climate crisis.
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